John Bennion

JOHN BENNION writes short fiction and novels about the western Utah desert and the people who inhabit that forbidding country. Publications include Breeding Leah and Other Stories (Signature Books, 1991) and Falling toward Heaven, forthcoming this year from the same press. He is currently working on Avenging Saint, a nineteenth-century murder mystery, and Second Wind, a young adult novel. An associate professor at Brigham Young University, Bennion teaches creative writing, the British novel, Mormon literature, and Wilderness Writing, a course in which students hike and backpack and write personal narratives based on their experiences. He lives in Springville with his wife, Karla, and their three youngest children.

By the Numbers

Articles/Essays – Volume 56, No. 4

Listen to the Out Loud version of the piece here. Masked and gowned, Isa stood in the corner of the operating room next to his son Cael. Three surgeons stood around the operating table and…

Vardis Fisher Pioneered Literary Mormon Writing Michael Austin, Vardis Fisher: A Mormon Novelist

Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 3

The Interview

Articles/Essays – Volume 18, No. 2

Tom looked at the sweat shining in the palms of his hands. Wiping them on his slacks, he opened the door into the stake president’s office and sat in a chair against the wall. A…

A House of Order

Articles/Essays – Volume 21, No. 3

Three weeks had passed since Howard and Sylvia Rockwood last made love. Earlier, before the days of silence, they could have begun casually, prompted by any minor conversational motion, finally drawing close enough for physical…

Renegotiating Scylla and Charybdis: Reading and the Distance between New York and Utah

Articles/Essays – Volume 30, No. 3

Readers unpacked Brian Evenson’s nationally-published collection of controversial short stories, Altmann’s Tongue, in diverse (perverse) ways. Jerry Johnston, a columnist for the Mormon church-owned Deseret News, observed, “The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind. He is…

Observing the New West | Brady Udall, Letting Loose the Hounds

Articles/Essays – Volume 31, No. 4

Since easterners first invested the West, the landscape and inhabitants have generally been viewed through the lens of a movie, television, or tourist camera. Everybody from eco-terrorists to wise-use ranchers, from politicians to military officers,…

Surviving with Hope | Mary Clyde, Survival Rates

Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 3

Mary Clyde’s short story collection, Survival Rates, won the Flannery O’Conner award for short fiction last year. Two other Mormon story writers in the past six years have achieved the same honor: Paul Rawlins, whose…

from Falling Toward Heaven

Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 4

The next morning Allison dropped Howard at the Mormon church in Rockwood, which, except for the thin spire, was shaped like a large, sub urban house. Though he had asked, she refused to go inside…

Like the Lilies of the Field

Articles/Essays – Volume 39, No. 4

I float in the corner of the university diving pool. My legs, which are more muscular and dense than my torso, pull me down. Closing my eyes, I’m rocked by the wake from a diver. Sound disappears with my ears under water. I arch my belly and lift my heavy legs higher. My body is buoyed up in a manner that feels like faith.

Mapping Manifest Destiny: Lucile Cannon Bennion (1891–1966)

Articles/Essays – Volume 45, No. 1